


Born to Fly High

by EthelPhantom



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Court of Owls, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dick Grayson-centric, Family Feels, Gen, Gift Exchange, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt No Comfort, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthelPhantom/pseuds/EthelPhantom
Summary: There are many things off about Dick Grayson's life and especially his childhood: He's Robin. He watched his parents die. He was able to fly.One of these things matters more than the others, one of these things saves lives, one of these things...One of them dooms them.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & John Grayson & Mary Grayson, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	Born to Fly High

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TotallyAHuman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotallyAHuman/gifts).



> This is a Gift Exchange we had in my friend group for my child who's probably way too obsessed and fascinated with CoO, angst, wings, Dick Grayson, and especially all these four together. Thus, they get a combination of these things. 
> 
> Love you, my favourite child, Moth, and I am so glad you exist. Happy gifts, hope you enjoy it! (And sorry I got the first chapter finished so late).
> 
> Hope everyone else enjoys it as well!

There was… 

Well. 

There  _ were  _ a lot of things one would think were wrong, awful and off about Dick Grayson’s childhood.

The first one was obvious — he had lost his parents, watched them fall down from the trapeze to their deaths, watched them be  _ murdered,  _ and he had been young. It would have been horrible for any person whose parents were good ones and loved them, but even more so for a child only nine years of age. 

It wasn’t fair. 

Then there was the second thing, supposedly about as obvious — if one knew the family secret anyway. 

Dick was Robin. Then he was Nightwing. He was a child and began fighting crime. He was merely nine or ten when he began, even he isn’t always all too sure how long it took before Bruce allowed him outside into the city while in his Robin getup. 

Robin, the homage to his parents, his name a memorial of the nickname his mom had given him, the colourful suit a tribute to the costumes he and his parents had used in shows. Both Alfred and Bruce had tried to convince him to wear something darker, or at least more muted colours because he was far too easily seen in those ones, but Dick stood his ground. He wouldn't wear anything else — it was too important for him to use something to remember his parents by. 

Robin was both his and his parents' legacy, in some ways.

It wasn’t Bruce’s fault. Dick would’ve gone after the man responsible for his parents’ deaths either way. This way it was better, safer, really, because having Bruce train him and watch after him while he ran on the rooftops and swung between buildings with grapplers meant he was less likely to get himself killed. This way, he had someone as a backup at all times until he would be old enough, and even then he would know that he could always ask for help because he'd had it for his entire life. 

The third one was less obvious, something not even Dick realised until he was explained it — until he told about it to someone who knew better than he did.

It was a world of people with wings. Almost everyone had such. Oftentimes they were a sign of status for the royal families all had their trademark — one family’s wings had the gorgeous purple only their family members possessed, another’s had wings three times bigger than their body (whether that was useful or not was its own question) —, those who had teardrop shaped wings typically became athletes or merchants and thus most of middle-class had fast wings, poorer, classless people typically had more…  _ flappy  _ wings.

So yes. Wings. It was more unusual than not for someone to not have wings, and the same went for wings that couldn’t fly — not without accidents. 

So…

_ Why could Dick Grayson not fly? _

He hadn’t been in any bigger accidents when he was younger.  _ He was able to fly when he was a child.  _ It didn’t make sense that he couldn't fly now, that he couldn't fly as an adult or even a teen because the fact he’d been able to fly before meant that his wings did not naturally possess the inability to take flight and soar through the skies. 

And really, that wasn’t even the  _ bad  _ thing about all of it. 

That was simply  _ strange.  _

Because, about a month after his parents had died and one Bruce Wayne took him under his wing (quite literally, but also under his roof and fed him and gave him a chance to a new family when he was still a child), Said Dick Grayson made a question to his foster father. A question that would have alarmed any (good) parent, and because Bruce Wayne was a good parent… well. He was alarmed, of course. 

_ “When will you pluck my wings?” _

While clipping and plucking wings in itself wasn’t… _too bad_ because it wouldn’t necessarily stop them from flying ever again, it would also not be good for them. Of course, it depended on how many feathers and _which_ feathers were lost, and how it was done, but regardless it would damage the wings and the tissue and just in general _not end well._

And a child asking when someone ( _ his foster Father!) _ will pluck his wings? 

Well, it sure sounded like he was used to that happening. 

_ That  _ could only mean one thing, and that thing was that his wings were regularly plucked and clipped — had been for years. His parents would have noticed, definitely, if someone else had been doing so because Dick kept telling Bruce that his parents were great and would never hurt him on purpose, that they’d done everything to keep him safe (or so they’d said), so the only option that left was that his own parents had been hurting him by damaging the boy’s wings. 

Bruce  _ hated  _ that thought. In fact, he was _horrified._ When he told Alfred, the flash of anger in the old man’s eyes told Bruce that everyone,  _ especially Mary and John Grayson,  _ should be glad they were dead already because Alfred would have probably otherwise shot them himself. 

Even with Bruce’s “No killing” rule, he wouldn’t have even tried to stop Alfred. 

(Not that he would have ever succeeded, but let a man dream.)

Despite himself and despite the disgust and anger forming into a lump in his throat, Bruce gave Dick a soft smile and asked the boy to accompany him to the living room to talk more. Dick, ever the unsuspecting, sweet child (or at least the obedient enough child, they all knew ‘unsuspecting’ wasn’t true in the least), obeyed and hopped to the living room beside Bruce, light on his feet like a feather. 

The way he moved like he loved the grace flying with those wings would have brought him, it made Bruce sad to know there was a good chance his son would never get to fly properly. 

He had been born to fly high.

_ It would never be possible. _

And, judging by the way there were far too many feathers missing from where they should be, and the tissue had been damaged in a way that looked like it was impossible for new feathers to grow anymore. His wings wouldn’t be able to carry him soon enough  _ at all.  _ It wasn't enough that he couldn't fly high, because he wouldn't be able to fly _at all,_ and that was what Bruce despised the most about all of this. Dick wanted to fly, and now he would not be able to. 

_ What kind of a monster would hurt their own child like so? _

Besides, how did you explain your tiny, wounded,  _ grieving  _ child that his parents had abused him, at least to some extent, because even an inexperienced parental figure like Bruce knew it wasn’t alright to do what John and Mary Grayson had done? How did you explain to him that he deserved better? How did you explain to him that what he’d come to think of as a regular occurrence that was simply something everyone did  _ was not alright in the first place and that he should have never had to go through that? _

_... _

...The thing was, you didn’t. There was no easy way. You would hurt your child when you told him that, when you told him that the parents he adored and missed and grieved weren't the kind parents he'd always thought them to be, and—

You had to do it anyway. 

It was your duty to make sure your child would know what he wasn't supposed to have to deal with, what he shouldn't stand, what he shouldn't allow others do to him. 

And thus he explained it to Dick. He told Dick why it couldn’t be done, why it  _ shouldn’t  _ be done, all the while being incredibly disturbed by this newfound information he got on Dick’s very… uh,  _ loving and affectionate _ parents. 

Once he was finished, the manor was quiet. In fact, everything was dead silent until his words finally sank in, until Dick finally understood what Bruce was saying, and then came the protests, the attempts at justifying what his beloved parents had done to him, the inability to process everything — or anything, who knew — just yet. Aside from the protests, growing quieter by the moment, coming from the child that slowly dissolved into sobs, not a single thing made noise. Moving next to Dick and wrapping his arms around the child carefully echoed in the living room far louder than it should have, clothes shuffling, responsibility weighing Bruce down as he finally  _ understood  _ what he had taken upon himself when he wanted to take in the child whose parents’ death he’s witnessed.

That didn’t mean Bruce regretted it for a single second. 

He would  _ never  _ regret taking Dick in.

He loved the kid. 

He’d keep loving the kid.

**Author's Note:**

> So,,, stay tuned for more hurt Dick Grayson who absolutely deserves a hug?
> 
> I would love nothing more than to get comments and kudos on this to know what your thoughts so far are, but either way, thank you for reading! 
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](https://ethelphantom.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream at me about for example DC or Code Geass! I can also be found on my art instagram [here](https://www.instagram.com/daicrimeth/?hl=en), so yelling at me there is just as alright.


End file.
